Cloudstreet

Quick lies in the shade of a tree in the midst of a vast wheat field. He throws a bone to Bill, his dog, and teases him, spinning a knife on the back of a skillet to decide who’s doing the dishes after breakfast. Quick’s living on his own out in the country now, and he’s making money by hunting and killing kangaroos, which seem to be overrunning certain areas of the country and eating crops. Today, he demonstrates the skill he’s built up over the years, shooting several kangaroos out in the wheat fields with relative ease. He cuts off their tails with a machete and throws the tails into the back of his truck, letting the farmer who hired him do what he wants with the bodies.

Quick notices that he missed one of the kangaroos, which seems to be lying and thrashing in the midst of the tall wheat nearby. He walks towards it and prepares to finish the creature off, but then it kicks him in the chest and sends him falling to the ground. Quick can only see stars above him and hears his dog whining and the kangaroo dying, and he slips into unconsciousness. It’s dark when Quick awakens and he knows that his truck is out of power, as the headlights are out. 

Suddenly, Quick sees his brother Fish sitting in an empty crate of oranges and somehow flying above him, rowing in his floating makeshift boat. Fish floats over the wheat as if it’s water and holds out a hand to Quick, beckoning him to join him. Quick hesitates, as this is a more grown-up version of the Fish he remembers, but he still has to try not to sob as Fish asks if he loves him. Quick insists that he can’t go with Fish because he can’t move, but he also asks Fish if he’s going home. Fish answers that he’s going to the Big Country. He pulls Quick’s whining dog into the crate and rows away, leaving Quick alone in darkness.

Old Wentworth, the farmer who had hired Quick, finds him lying in the wheat that afternoon and tells him he’s lucky he was found, as he could have easily died otherwise. Quick passes out again and wakes up at night in Wentworth’s house, knowing that Wentworth is a strict employer who’s sure to cut his pay for this, but he feels grateful to be alive all the same. The next time he wakes up, he sees Wentworth’s daughter Lucy tending to his aching body by rubbing it with goanna oil. She flirts with him and tells him about her plan to open a florist shop in Perth, an idea she’d apparently come up with just a few minutes ago. She puts her hands in his boxers as she massages his body, and Quick doesn’t feel like objecting. When she leaves, he feels vaguely guilty.

In the following summer months, Quick continues his work hunting kangaroos and protecting people’s crops, missing his dog but earning good money. He also continues to see Lucy Wentworth, though their relationship is mostly sexual and Quick doesn’t think about her much during the day. One night during his work, he thinks he hears a kangaroo approaching through the wheat, but when he lights up the area, he sees that it’s a man running towards him. As the man approaches, Quick realizes that the man is himself; this other version of Quick runs past and into the night. This happens again from time to time, and Quick wonders if he’s delirious.

Quick drives Lucy around the countryside in his truck with no particular destination in mind. The two of them get into an argument, as Lucy is annoyed at Quick’s withdrawn attitude and Quick is getting tired of Lucy’s constant teasing. Quick pulls the car over as they tentatively make peace, and Quick steps out to relieve himself by the side of the road. He hears a car coming around the bend and tries to hurry so he won’t be seen, even as Lucy prods and teases him more. She starts stripping and is nearly naked when the car comes around the bend and catches them both looking very compromised in its headlights. As it turns out, the car belongs to a shire clerk.

It isn’t long before the entire town is buzzing with gossip about what Quick and Lucy were apparently caught doing. Pleased with herself, Lucy begins negotiating for her florist’s shop first thing in the morning, while her mother wonders how she could ever show her face in town again. Quick packs up his truck and leaves within an hour, fleeing from the whole mess and knowing that the harvest will begin soon, meaning there’d be no more work for him anyway. He drives without knowing where he’s going until he spots a Black man in a pinstripe suit by the side of the road, hoping to hitch a ride. Without really thinking much about it, Quick pulls over and lets the man in.

As he drives the man towards the city, Quick is almost tempted to tell the stranger his entire story, just to get it off his chest. They eat and drink together, and Quick feels strangely relaxed and comforted, asking about the man’s business and getting vague answers in return. Quick asks the man where to drop him off, and the man tells him to follow the railway line. He starts to sweat as the streets start to look familiar. He sees Cloudstreet in the distance and quickly asks where the man wants to be let out. The man points to the house and Quick drops him off at the corner. After getting out, the man asks Quick if he’s coming, but Quick just laughs nervously and speeds away in his truck.

Quick keeps driving until he ends up back at his original hometown of Margaret River, where he’s hired as a truck driver by his father’s cousin Earl Blunt. Earl and his wife are tough and humorless people, hardened by the Great Depression, and Quick wonders if this was what the Lambs themselves could have become if they had stayed on their farm instead of moving to Perth. But Earl pays Quick well for his truck-driving work, and Quick tries to forget his old life and focus on making a living. However, he still holds onto his old habit of cutting out photos of unfortunate people from the newspaper and sticking them to his wall, and they still dance around him at night.

Quick works for Earl for a year, telling himself that he’s recovering but secretly feeling lost, miserable, and homesick. But he continues to throw himself into his work and refuses to think about his past. He keeps an orderly schedule and drives the truck around constantly, whether for work or simply to lose himself. One winter night, the truck’s brakes fail on a downward slope as it approaches a railway crossing— as a train approaches. With an old Bible verse running through his head, Quick just barely manages to swerve the truck into a pile of dirt by the tracks. After digging it out and driving it back, he tells Earl what happened and Earl gives Quick a week off work, taking it out of his paycheck.

Quick spends most of his free week cleaning and fixing up Earl’s old boat, and towards the end of the week he sets out with it to go fishing on the river. He can’t help but remember the night that Fish almost drowned as he walks down the same beach, but he tries to ignore the thought. After trying to relax out on the water for a bit, he casts a line and immediately feels a tug. He pulls up the fish and finds that it’s two fish, one biting the tail of the other. He lowers his hook into the water again and gets another immediate catch, with somehow more fish this time. The silver-scaled fish multiply each time, practically jumping into the boat on their own and almost filling it completely.

Eventually, Quick tries to be sensible despite the impossibility of what’s happening. He starts rowing for the shore with his boat brimming with fish, and he spots a Black man seemingly walking on the water. As Quick reaches the shallows, all of the fish cough up blood and the boat sinks along with the fish. The Black man is on the shore when Quick reaches it, and the man seems to be holding back a laugh. Quick ignores him and walks past, but he keeps catching inexplicable glimpses of the Black man on his long drive home.

As Quick tries to sleep that night, his head is swimming with visions of his family and of the unfortunate victims from the pictures on his wall. The trip home from the river seemed to take three hours, despite it only being a 30-minute drive. He doesn’t feel like he’s going insane, but he knows that something feels off, making him unsure how to feel. Quick calls out in the night, and Fish seems to somehow hear it all the way in Cloudstreet. Fish lets out a terrible cry himself, waking the entire house.

In the morning, Earl and his wife find that Quick is glowing like a light bulb, and he seems unable to stop crying. They give him food and water and do what they can to get rid of the bizarre condition, but Quick continues to glow even brighter, against all reason. After deciding that a doctor is out of the question, Earl’s wife demands that they bring Quick to Perth, insisting that he “needs his own.” They take Quick into their truck (along with some pigs in the bed, to be delivered later) and set off for Cloudstreet. Earl warns that Oriel will probably be angry with them, but his wife tells him that it doesn’t matter; there’s no other choice.